i'm not even sure i'm gonna have time and energy for this and i haven't even checked if "the usual place" is at my disposal on my birthday, but i'm having fun planning the thing and making the invites anyway .

Looks good.

Anmal, awesome invitation card!
I did think using of Gaelic font wasn't well justified until I read the second line from the bottom.
I would also rephrase or even dump what follows 'Why?' - irrelevant, pessimistic, highly subjective.

Awesome
fantastic
Magic
amazing
cool

thats very elegant and unique AnMal !

you are always coming up with something that is you - i love that !

the bumpmapped tapestry BG is very nice and i like all the ornaments, that look like stringed gold beads
did you stroke the path ?
how did you manage it always ends up perfectly, without any partially overlapping beads ?

I love it AnMal. I really love those beads and the colors are very complimentary together. The bump mapping sets it off.
How do you do the beading, I have seen a lot of that in your projects?

he4rty: thanks! i was just starting to think of the party when you posted that birthday banner - and then of course i had to make nice invitation cards too .
k1tesseraena: thank you ! my plan was to mix two favourite styles, indian/bollywood and celtic. there are other celtic elements beside the font, but you'd probably have to be a celt wannabee or a long time friend of one to notice.

the people who will recieve this invitation in case i really get to send it off, will be people who know me well enough to understand me. it's well know among my friends that i have "age paranoia" but love celebrating my birthday, so none of them will think the line is pessimistic or irrelevant, they'll just laugh and think "so typical of her!"
odinbc: wow, thank you! a very creative way of commenting .
esper: i love hearing stuff like "you always come up with something that is you" (and who wouldn't love hearing that?!). i did a simple path stroke, nothing fancy about it, but i experiment a lot with the brush spacing and if it's just impossible to get right i try it in inkscape instead, where i can make more adjustments. didn't have to on this one, though, it was rather well behaved.
molly: thank you ! i'm a beader and jewellery maker and lover of glitter and bling, so it didn't take long til the beads started showing up in my gimp stuff too. like i said above, it's just a simple path stroke and i have two simple bead brushes that have proved good for path strokes.